Monthly Archives: October 2016

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A contention that I have made over and over is that the government doesn’t actually give a shit about the soldiers. We have all the Republicans who are all about the troops and how they are protecting and serving. Then they turn around and fuck them in the ass. They’re fucking their VA benefits, have stripped so much of what the old appeals used to be to get poor kids to join the military. But this most recent incident has just proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that the government doesn’t give two solitary fucks about the actual soldiers and only care about the wars that they can use them for. What happened? Strap in, folks. You’re gonna love this.

For those who didn’t know, there is often a concept called a “reenlistment bonus.” It’s paid out when a soldier agrees to extend their time in the military. About ten years ago, the state of California put out an offer to over 10,000 servicemen/women to reenlist, offering them a bonus of $15,000 to extend their enlistment by six years. Those who signed for the bonus in 2006-07 kept up their end of the bargain and they got their money, fair and square. However, the Pentagon is currently saying that these bonuses were improperly paid out, and they are literally demanding that the soldiers pay them back. Unbelievable.

Roughly 9,700 servicemen/women have been told that they need to return their reenlistment bonus money. One woman owes over $20,000 to the federal government. Money that she was offered and kept up her end of the bargain to get. This is money that they have no choice to send. Think of it like child support, but instead it’s money that the federal government can come after you like loan sharks for. And all because someone decided not to do their job. These soldiers are the victim of shady business practices, and now they are having to pay the price. Literally. The state of California is sending auditors to collect money from people who did nothing wrong! They signed a dotted line and did what they said they would do. What the fuck is wrong with this country when a branch of our government can’t just own its mistake and have to eat maybe cutting some spending to compensate and instead has to demand that innocent people give them tens of thousands of dollars back?!

Here’s a question – what about the soldiers who died keeping up their end? Are these auditors going after their families to collect their totally-earned gains? What about the soldier who lost limbs fighting in the wars that our government had to bribe them to get them to stay in? Are we going to demand that the person who sacrificed for this country give that money back? I’d say they fucking earned it. I would love to be a fly on the wall of the meeting when an auditor is having to talk to someone who has PTSD because of fighting in the war and they have to go over to them and tell them to give the money that they go fair and square back. How would that make you feel? You think those auditors have pride in their work? They shouldn’t. It’s morally disgusting.

I got an idea of where we can get the money to cover the Pentagon’s fuck-up from. Maybe we can take some of the capital injection money that we still put into Wall Street and put it in there. There’s an idea. Actually have Wall Street pick up the tab for once in their fucking lives. That’s a thought. Or maybe the Pentagon could cut the funding for their latest America’s Big Cock fighter jet and put it into this mess. How about that? Oh, right, if this country doesn’t have the latest tech to be having a proxy war with Russia in Syria with, we won’t be able to show how awesome we are.

These soldiers should sue. All of them. The federal government has fucked up here, make them own it! Make them own their mistake instead of getting innocent people to foot the bill. Fuck you, America! To all the people in the Pentagon who are okay with this, fuck you too! To all the Republican and Democrats (hey Hillary, that includes you!) who talk about how great the soldiers are and voted to have them go fight in America’s giant masturbation session, fuck the lot of you as well! These people did nothing wrong! They are innocent victims! Making them pay for this is like making the person whose store is robbed pay for the thief’s stay in a hotel. These soldiers are being given the equivalent of held upside down and shaken to empty their pockets because the Pentagon doesn’t want to have to maybe, just maybe, take some cuts to their money to make up the difference.

Fuck the Pentagon. Fuck the government. Fuck those who allow this sort of thing to happen. And the victims here should band together and sue. The government needs to pay for their mistakes. So fucking stupid.

Until next time, a quote,

“I love it when someone insults me. It means I don’t have to be nice anymore.” – Billy Idol

To anyone who doesn’t know, I am very pro-choice. I have this position for a number of reasons. For starters, since there are seven billion people on this planet and overpopulation is the biggest threat to our planet’s future, it just seems ridiculous to me to force a woman to go through with a pregnancy that she doesn’t want. Second, whose right is it for the government to tell a woman what to do with her body? I find it amazing that all these “small government” conservatives want to be able to legislate what women will do with their bodies. Third, making abortion illegal will do nothing to stop them from happening. This point has been brought up a thousand times, and it is still on point. It just makes it so that abortions happen in back alleys by doctors who can’t be trusted, rather than in a clean, sterile environment where women can get care from licensed physicians who have years of practice under their belt. There is no rational reason for me to be pro-life.

Anyone who has been following this blog for a long time knows that I am very much in support of Planned Parenthood as well. I’ve told this story before (anecdotal evidence!) about a former friend of mine who hates my guts. When she was a teenager, the guy she was with used her as a living sex toy and she ended up getting knocked up because this guy also wasn’t the best about protection. What a shock. Alone, unable to talk to anyone, she made what she has described as the hardest decision of her entire life and went to Planned Parenthood to have an abortion. It was something she dealt with alone, and it helped shape all of her relationships since that point.

So when I see a rather sizeable crowd gathered outside of Planned Parenthood tonight with signs all about how abortion is evil and how Planned Parenthood is basically an abortion factory, you can imagine how annoyed I was. Not only is the idea that all they do being abortions been proven beyond any reasonable doubt to be complete bullshit, but it only accounts for 3% of all the services they provide. The rest is helping girls like a former girl I ran with whose periods were so painful that they caused her to be in agony for hours get birth control that she doesn’t take for sexual assistance purposes (though that is a fringe benefit) but to help her manage something that is excruciating. Or there are women who don’t have the money for breast scans or other things to help detect cancer early. Then there are just the people who use them to help get easy medical care that they don’t have to pay an arm and a leg for.

These people are motivated by ignorance. They use pathos to get their point. It’s easy to have some grotesque photo of a deceased embryo and believe that that is all abortion is. Some murder factory for the fetus where all the youth are taken to be slaughtered. It’s disgusting, to say the least. Not to mention disingenuous. That is not what abortion is. Never even close. Most abortions happen in the first few weeks of a pregnancy, when the fetus is nothing but a cluster of cells. This image of abortion doctors being Nazi scientists harvesting baby organs is both laughable and insulting. However, for those who are easily swayed by pathos and whose critical faculties lack in almost every discernible way, that’s all they need to hear to conclude that their path is right. It helps that they are almost-exclusively guided by a religious belief that says that all life is sacred. You know, except when God is commanding his armies to kill children and rip open the bellies of pregnant women. Then murder is A-okay. But let’s not get into the hypocrisy of Christianity. That conversation would never end.

However, this is where something that I strongly believe in comes into play. See, mama didn’t raise no hypocrite. I find it funny that free speech has gone from being a liberal issue like back during the Red Scare when people were fighting against McCarthy and his witch-hunts, who argued that free speech and a free press was the cornerstone of a functioning democracy and should be cherished. Because free speech isn’t designed to protect the majority opinion. That doesn’t need protecting. It is designed to protect the minority opinion. And here’s where I am going to annoy some of my more liberal-minded contemporaries – the opinion that God hates abortion and it is evil and should be outlawed is a minority opinion in the US. Overall, society in this country is cool with abortion and thinks that it should be legal for those who want to partake. They believe that women should have dominion over their own bodies. That’s good. No joke, I’m glad that that’s the case. So the demonstration I saw tonight is a minority opinion (dumb as it is) that is being exercised by people who have it.

So when someone came to me on the phone tonight and said, “dude, I wish I could blow those fuckers up,” I decided to stand tall to that person and say that that is a really stupid way to view things. The reality is that I vehemently disagree with everything those idiots with the signs were saying. However, I would fight another person who wanted to take away that right to the death for their right to speak their ridiculous bullshit. I refuse to be a hypocrite. I refuse to join a group of people who want to suppress another group’s opinion, even if I believe that they are completely wrong and it says a lot about their character for having that opinion.

I stopped believing in God because I stopped seeing things as us vs. them. I got rid of this dogmatic part of me that wants to follow an ideology blindly. Now I see my brethren on the left seeing it as totally cool to demonize people on the right and shut down their speech. After all, their speech might hurt people’s feelings! Or spread “dangerous ideas!” We can’t have that! If something offends something that the Supreme Leader says, then that thing must be stopped! We must take to the streets! Burn their books! Shut down their speech because we don’t approve! If they don’t conform to our way of thinking, put them in camps! Some gross hyperbole mixed in with things that these people think. But here’s something that really gets to me when thinking about it –

For some of these, can you honestly tell which is which?

Until next time, a quote,

“We think we’ve come so far. Heretics, the burning of witches, all ancient history. Then, before you can blink an eye, suddenly it threatens to start all over again.” – Capt. Jean Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation

When people like me say that the social justice crowd has taken all meaning from the term rape, what we’re talking about are things like “stare rape” or even stupider still, “birth rape.” Go to Google, both of those are real things. It is baffling how the SJW crowd has turned everything that isn’t asking for consent every two minutes into rape. Body language and personal accountability be damned! These people know what’s going on. However, now they are broadening their horizons beyond just taking the concept of rape and putting it through the shredder of being able to be taken seriously. Now they are doing the same thing to sexual assault. As was exemplified in this article from Tech.MIC (linked here), where a woman told her harrowing story about a virtual person virtually touching her virtual body, and how she feels like it was just as violating as the real thing. Unbelievable.

Before I get into this, let me say that the story this woman tells is more than a little uncool. As in, the person who was a complete asshole and wanting to get some really stupid jollies with an overpriced VR headset (that shit is a gimmick. Fact) does make for a not cool person. A pity this game doesn’t have any way to report this kind of behavior in-game. For stuff like this, it actually does seem like this would be a good place for such things. But the reality is that VR is a new thing, and like most new things, people are figuring it out and getting used to everything. It’s a work in progress, and of course bad people are going to find ways to exploit it. And that’s where my agreements with this person end.

For starters, let’s talk about the family members that this woman was with. If you take the article at face value, then while she was being very uncomfortable with someone and increasingly making her frustration known, they were laughing away. Because I’m sure that’s what a spouse and a family member of a person would totally do, right? Because if a girl that I am dating is telling somebody to back off, the first thing I am going to do is laugh about it. That’s what normal people do, right? What’s that? That seems ridiculously contrived to fit a narrative that this person is trying to tell? Well, this is the same publication that published all the bullshit that Brianna Wu was peddling back in the day, so it makes sense that they’ll take any story and put it out there.

Next, here’s something to know about the world of gaming – you can turn it off. This ties into my biggest gripe with the article I am responding to, but if this person was so forward and you are so uncomfortable that you feel as if you are being actually violated (don’t worry, we’re getting to that), why didn’t you unplug from the game? Here is a situation where you have the absolute power to leave this game at any time by turning it off or taking off the headset and you choose to continue to be there. I’m not victim blaming, as this guy clearly was an asshole (or girl. Username aside, we have no way of knowing what the gender of this person was. It could very well be some douche canoe chick. Check out the stats on ACTUAL sexual assault by women in the LB part of the LGBT community. It’s a lot more harrowing than you think.

But here’s where I get to get into uncomfortable territory. Your equating of a disgusting action taken by a very unpleasant person to real sexual assault is equal parts stupid and insulting. Girl I used to live stream with was sexually assaulted by a family member for years. I guarantee you, she would have loved to be able to take off a headset and make what was happening to her stop. She would have loved it if she could turn off the system and make ongoing sexual abuse that scarred her for life stop in an instant. That’s what you could do. Could she? As a little girl, could she do that? Can the girl getting sexually assaulted by her father? Could me former friend who was violated by her skating coach when she was 14? Could any of those people just unplug it and make it stop?

How dare you. How dare you make this disgusting false-equivalence. Digital hands touching a digital body in an inappropriate way, juvenile as it is, is NOTHING compared to the actual experiences of actual women that I actually know. I want to take you and beat you against a wall for being the next person in a long list of people who pretends that virtual avatars and what happens to them is in any way equivalent to things that happen in the real world. It’s not. You were not actually groped by this guy. You were not actually fondled. That person’s fingers weren’t actually in your genitals. Was it a violation of your space and uncool? Undoubtedly. But it fucking pisses me off when I see this crap and the comments section had all kinds of people agreeing. Again, this is the same publication that put out Brianna Wu’s bullshit, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. But I don’t want to be.

The thing about how we are diluting concepts like rape and sexual assault to the point that people can’t take them seriously is that there are real-world ramifications. After all, what does it say about women when they are (not really but let’s pretend for the sake of argument) traumatized on equal measure by violation in a digital world vs the real world. My friend who was violated by her skating coach couldn’t have normal relationships with boys for years. It took ages for her to overcome it. Did this woman have such a reaction? Girl I know who was sexually assaulted for years by a family member has all sorts of psychological damage associated with that. Does this bitch? No?! Then maybe she should take the fucking VR headset off and shut the fuck up!

A guy was an asshole in a multiplayer game. Not nice? Sure. Uncool? Should they be reported? Absolutely. Is it the same as sexual assault in the real world? Don’t insult my fucking intelligence.

*Update* Some people did a little digging into this story to try and find out who this guy who virtually groped this woman is. There is evidence that he doesn’t actually exist. Well, there’s a shock. I didn’t expect that from the publication that swallowed Brianna Wu’s bullshit hook, line, and sinker.

I have made no secret of the fact that I consider myself an anti-feminist. At least where the First World is concerned. Here in the West, the pet issues of feminism are a bad joke. The punch line is that while they are bitching about sexy women in video games there are women in the Middle East being sold as sex slaves to ISIS. Oh, right, Islam is totally fine and nothing bad has ever come from them. Because that’s totally not spitting the face of victims of Islamist violence, right?

However, all of my issues with them aside, there are times when I am able to find common ground with these people. Like when I come across something I came across today, which is the most insulting thing that I have ever seen directed at a woman. Let me show you, and then we can talk about it.

Where do I even begin with how utterly abhorrent this document is? This was left at the table of a woman in lieu of a tip, and my blood boils like you wouldn’t believe. Let’s take this apart piece by piece.

First, where does this cunt get off saying that this woman’s role is in the home? What century do we live in? They then go on to say that her working is the reason that her husband is sleeping with somebody else. Did you ever stop to consider that she isn’t married? Let’s assume that there was some obvious sign that she is, like a wedding ring. So her being at work and helping to contribute to the home means that the husband is off fucking some other woman? What kind of disgusting bullshit is this? Because all women who work have husbands who cheat. That’s right. Groj knows, I was cheating on every girl that I have dated because all of them worked. That’s totally like me.

Second, does this asshole have any idea just how expensive it is to live anymore? The cost of living has sky-rocketed, while wages have stagnated. Not to mention, she’s a waitress. They are often paid well-below minimum wage and have to subsist on tips. I have a lot of problems with that, but let’s set that aside and look at this another way. Let’s say that she has a family. Let’s say that she has a kid or two. Going with the assumption that she’s married, and has children, then she has a huge financial obligation that she may not be able to afford alone. So this cock-sucking shit-heel is going to come here and then make it seem like she is committing some kind of affront to “manhood” and the “American family”? Fuck that noise! Manhood is just fine with a chick working. Every girl I have been in a relationship with or just run with has had a job and I didn’t feel that my manhood was even slightly attacked.

Third, let’s say that she isn’t married. What if she’s a single mom? What if she is all alone taking care of a kid on wages from this job? What nice thought you just presented telling her that she is doing something wrong by doing everything she can to make sure her family has a home and food on their table.

We then have the biggest asshole in the history of the world telling this woman that instead of going to her “job” (they put that in quotations, not me) and trying to help provide for her family, she should be at home cleaning and making her husband a hot meal. Fuck that noise! Thinking back to my last relationship, the kitchen was the last place I wanted my ex. Loved the girl, but she couldn’t cook for shit. We both understood that that was where I was at my best. Jokes aside, I refuse to believe that the hypothetical husband of this woman is going to be mad that she is helping to secure the family’s finances. If he is, that says a lot about him. And how fucking dare you say that this woman is wasting her time busting her ass for asshole like you who call her tips “hand-outs” and make it sound like it is an inconvenience to you that she gets them. Fuck you! I want to find this person and beat some sense into their skull, with a hammer.

They close out the letter saying that she should do all of this because it is what “god intended.” If your god is a sexist asshole who wants women to be in the home making hot meals for their man, then he’s a sexist pig too and fuck his almighty non-existent ass for demanding this. But, to the person’s credit, there is plenty of biblical evidence pointing to that. The Bible does say that a woman is not to have power over a man and that a woman’s role is to serve her husband. I gotta give credit where it’s due. The god of the Bible is a sexist prick, and the New Testament didn’t make that go away. I honestly have more issue with the liberals who try to pretend shit like this doesn’t exist than conservatives who are faithful to it. Jesus said that he didn’t come to abolish the Old Testament laws, but that he came to fulfill them.

In closing, fuck this person. They are an amoral, reprehensible, unrepentant hyena and if they get hit by a bus tomorrow, I feel no sympathy for them. What a complete piece of shit.

Until next time, a quote,

“Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.” – George Eliot

Something I have talked about before, but I am a victim of mental illness. It is because of a head injury I got when I was 14. I busted my skull open on a rock, and it had some pretty severe consequences that I am still suffering with today. It’s been a constant source of difficulty in my life and I have to live with it. Brain damage only works in one direction, after all. So when I am going to talk about issues surrounding mental health, this is an area where I am very knowledgeable. The reason I bring this up is because when I am going to rip the shit out of the latest PC culture retardedness, you can tell that I am speaking from experience. Because one of the biggest things the social justice community likes to do is claim that you are not part of a group so you can’t comment on whatever their pet issue of the week is. Cancelling that right out of the gate.

Halloween is upon us, so now we have all the girls getting skimpy outfits, the PC police saying that skimpy outfits are bad (Groj forbid that women have any agency in buying their own outfits and that maybe some of them actually want to look slutty. I know, what a revolutionary thought), and we have a thousand and one haunted houses that all claim that they are going to fuck you up. Some of them accomplish this. Seen some pretty epic ones in my time. Got in trouble at one where my fight or flight instinct lashed out at a dude who jumped in front of us with a chainsaw. Thankfully, the dude was a good sport and we actually got to know one-another while he was nursing a left hook to the face. Said it was a risk he took, but he still liked what he did. Fun guy.

One outlet who wants to do a haunted house has a rather neat idea. I think that all this VR stuff is a fad, and that isn’t going to change. Where it is now, I see it as more of a novelty and perhaps a teaching tool for pilots or for surgeons or things like that. For gaming, it is a novelty that will wear thin after a while. But while the fad is going on, one haunted house wanted to use it to create a scary experience of a messed-up mental hospital through the eyes of one of the patients. You sit in a wheelchair and experience it. Sounds cool, right? I mean, why go through all the trouble of making really elaborate sets and putting the time and effort into making something scary when you can be lazy and just put people in wheelchairs and give them a box to wear over their head? Makes sense to me.

However, as with all ideas that could be any amount of fun, the PC police had to come in and shit all over it. Why? Because it seems that this is somehow demeaning to mental patients and making light of what they go through. This is why I brought up the fact that I suffer from mental illness earlier. Because to all the social justice retards who think this way, I want you to sit down. We need to have a talk. Do NOT speak for me! I am part of this community, and I am telling you now, you do not speak for me. I am just as capable of speaking for myself. This does not bother me. Not one tiny bit. I have no problem with this lazy-ass approach to a haunted house. Why? Because I know how real mental hospitals are. Anyone with any amount of sense knows that actual mental hospitals are not the places from horror movies. There’s this thing that we learn as little kids that I guess your perpetually-stuck-in-childhood SJWs couldn’t remember – it’s fantasy. It’s not real. I’m not really in a mental hospital with messed-up people. I’m in a fantastical setting that is meant to scare me. Just like how I don’t think that all West Virginians are psycho cannibals, which has also been in a ton of horror movies.

Now we have people from organizations that are supposed to represent those with mental illness saying that stuff like this just works toward stereotypes about the mentally ill. No, you fucktard! It uses a trope that people understand to illicit fear out of people. Just like how The Last of Us uses a real kind of fungus and plays to the fear that it could infect people. I don’t actually believe that will happen, because it isn’t real. I don’t think a mental hospital or mental patients are like that, because it ISN’T FUCKING REAL! It’s a fantasy! These people are so stupid and juvenile that part of me wonders if they have object permanence. Like, if I cover my face, will they think I’m gone? Maybe I should play Patty Cake with the immature fuckers.

When people like me say that we hate PC culture, we aren’t talking about the sometimes funny, oftentimes dumb stuff that Trump says. We are talking about the shit that comes from people’s mouths like this. I am part of the community of the mentally ill. I suffer with it every day. With that in mind, I say this – do not speak for me. I can speak for myself, and I got NO problem with this stupid haunted house. It’s fine. But I guess it was shut down. Yeah, the PC whiners got the whole deal shut down because the loathsome pussies basically started a complaint campaign and because nobody wants to be accused of being insensitive or prejudiced, they capitulated.

How I wish that more people would stand their ground against the social justice crybullies. Because all they can do is yell about it on the Internet. The lazy clicktavists aren’t going to get off Twitter and Tumblr long enough to actually do anything about a group who wouldn’t give them what they want. Would they go there and stand with signs and protest? I honestly would love to see if the overly-sedentary lifestyles of these people could actually manage it. What bugs me more is that it isn’t people who are part of these communities the PC police are going after who do the complaining. Like, you had this SJW gaming event promoting diversity, and it was almost all white people there. Meanwhile, you have an actual gaming event that has all kinds of people. The irony of that isn’t lost on me.

In closing, I am a person with mental illness, this doesn’t bother me, and you fuckers don’t speak for me. Fuck off.

Until next time, a quote,

“When angry, count to ten before you speak. When very angry, count to one hundred.” – Thomas Jefferson

Well, after all the stupid bullshit with Square Enix, the sequel to the very fun reboot has finally come to a console that I can actually play it on. Given how they screwed the pooch with this game, it’s pretty clear that this is going to be the last entry in the franchise. Square Enix felt that the original game underperformed even though it was hugely popular. This game will be the death knell for the franchise since it was so mucked up with the timed-exclusivity and the release at the same time as a ton of other games last year. I’m honestly sad to see the franchise end. It had a lot of potential for interesting sequels. So how does the franchise go out? Not too bad, actually. It’s not great, but it’s pretty good. Let’s get into it.

The plot goes that Lara is now stuck living in her father’s shadow, trying to clear his name. After what she saw in the previous game, she is convinced that everything her father believed is true and she has to set things right. Now it’s off to Siberia to go hunt for the missing truth of the “Divine Source” her father had been after, all the while crossing paths with an overused plot device in gaming – a secret organization that is insanely powerful and wants to rule the world. Yeah, not a fan of that. Who wins in the end? I think you know the answer.

When I reviewed the original game, I said that it was a game that had a lot of flaws. It was overly gory for no good reason, had a plot that seemed to be at odds with the mechanics and had really bad stereotypes as characters. But I could look past all that because the game itself is so fun. Here there are also a bunch of problems, and while the game is fun, it isn’t as fun as the last one. I am going to take a different approach this time and talk about the good stuff first before talking about the problems. I want this to be constructive.

The good stuff is that the gameplay here is just as fun as in the last one. The stealth has been tweaked a bit, and you have some new weapons to play around with. But the reality is that it is still as awesome and fun as I remember. There is one new toy they give you that I spammed to no end because it made some of the bigger fights a cake-walk. However, you are given a choice in how you want to play. Since I am all about stealth, you probably know how I did. My version of Lara Croft is a hunter who stalks her prey and takes them out. No one escape her arrows, single shots to the head, or blade.

Next up are the visuals. This isn’t the greatest-looking game in the world. Truth is, it honestly looks about the same as the PS3 game last year. But it still looks good. Setting it in an arctic part of the world was awesome because it allowed the devs to have some fun with how you use ice and other such mechanics. Since everything in this game is about motion and staying in motion, you learn to use all your surroundings. That’s another thing that the gameplay mechanics give you to play with. Not the greatest-looking game on the system, but I do like the look all the same.

Another nice touch was the crafting mechanic. This game also has an emphasis on Lara being a survivor who has to make the most of whatever she has on hand in order to stay alive. Sure, it means that you are constantly scrounging for materials, but I was doing the same thing in the last game, so it was fine. If anything, it made me feel more like I was in her shoes because we had to put things to use in order to make pretty much everything for your weapons. You are given very little in this game.

Here’s the part where we get into some of my problems. For starters, making Lara a more confident character actually made her boring. So much of her personality from the last game was sucked into oblivion for this one. I kind of liked the angry desperation she had in the previous entry. Here, even when there is bad stuff happening, Lara always seems to be in control. There are only a couple stand-out moments where she gets genuinely pissed. One of them was pretty badass when she’s yelling at someone who betrayed her and puts a bullet in them. Which brings me to my next problem.

The side-characters in this game was bland and forgettable. They bring Jonah back from the previous entry. That’s cool. What happened to the others? Like Sam and Reyes? One of the stand-out points from the last game was that diary entry Jonah made about his fear about the island and what he would do if he was the last one standing. The characters in the previous game were stereotypes, sure, but the game at least had fun with those stereotypes. This time around, pretty much all the side characters are dull as dirt. I found two of the characters in the logs that I was finding more interesting than pretty much anyone in the main game. Hell, I wanted to know what their story was more than Lara’s.

And then there’s the villains. This guy is as forgettable as possible. So is the secret other villain who had a pretty decent reveal, I will admit. I didn’t care about this dude. The game wants you to hate him, but even the voice acting is trying too hard. The game also did this weird thing where it would cut to the two villains. All of the major cutscenes are connected with Lara seeing what’s happening. Here, we just take a break from the game to see two villains talking and it isn’t especially interesting. I didn’t get why and it broke the flow of what was happening. There were also these weird cuts that I guess were supposed to show the passage of time, but they come out of nowhere and linger too long.

Overall, this game is good. It isn’t great. In comparison to the last game, this one is the lesser. But it is still good. If you are of a mind to, I do recommend checking out, but maybe wait for the price to drop. Sorry you had to go out on this note, Lara. But hey, Agent 47 is doing much the same, since Square Enix decided to shit where they eat with that one too.

For those of you who know my thoughts on the film Final Fantasy VII: Adventure Children, you may see where I’m going with this. Only this time, instead of a film that just assumes that we know all the characters and the struggles of the universe it is set in based on an established franchise, we get a film that assumes that we know all the characters and struggles of the universe of a franchise that hasn’t even been established yet. If you went into this without knowing a single thing about Final Fantasy XV and the lore surrounding it, you will be VERY confused. But it does looks pretty amazing. Let’s talk about it.

The plot of the film is pretty much a prequel to the game, but this time with more extravagant outfits. Okay. We have King Regis, voiced by Sean Bean. Make your “when does he die” jokes here. This is weird, because as I understand it, he isn’t in the game. Why have him in this movie? Then we have Luna, voiced by Lena Headey. This is also weird. Partly because as I understand it, she is also not in the game, but then there is the fact that her voice does NOT go with this character. She is clearly well into middle age, voicing a character who is supposed to be in her younger years. It does NOT go well together. You have Aaron Paul doing the voice of one of Regis’ soldiers, the Kingsglaive. They are charged with fighting the invading Nifelheim army to hold them back. It’s a useless battle, since the invading force is vastly more powerful. Seeing defeat as inevitable, Regis is making an effort to sign a treaty. However, this gets wrapped up in a very dull plot about betrayal and action. Lots and lots and lots of action.

To this movie’s credit, the visuals are nothing short of incredible. This film is a testament to the power of whatever visual software Square Enix is using. It truly is incredible. And this film is infinitely more colorful than the studio’s last work in Advent Children. So the colors get more of a chance to pop. When it isn’t so ridiculously over the top with fight sequences that never end, this movie can look pretty damn amazing. Too bad I got so little chance to take any of it in. Maybe because the film decided that it wants to be wall-to-wall action without end.

Now we get into my gripes. For starters, why are they using voice actors that aren’t even in the game? I know for a fact that neither Sean Bean nor Lena Heady are in this game. Aaron Paul did his best to sell his performance. Since none of the characters were particularly interesting, I enjoyed his role the most. At least there I could tell that there was a genuine enthusiasm. Sean Bean sounds bored. As does Lena Heady. The whole cast sounds like it couldn’t possibly care less about anything that was happening in the film. There was this weirdly level thing about everything that everyone said. Even when it was supposed to be very emotional, everyone is monotone. Oh how I hope the game this is supposed to be a prequel for isn’t like that. Otherwise it will get really old, really quick.

And that’s another thing – this movie took ZERO time to world-build. They talk about refuges and parts of the world, none of which we get to see. We don’t get why there is this huge intolerance of the refugees, or where their little catch-phrase comes into play. I really would have liked it if we could have taken some time to get to know ANY of the world that Noctis and his chums get to explore in the game. I mean, we are watching this movie to get a taste of the game, right? Is the entire game just nothing but over-the-top action non-stop? If so, then to be honest, I’m a little nervous. But then I remember – Advent Children was much the same. So hopefully I have nothing to worry about.

This film exemplifies everything that armchair film critics say about modern blockbusters. There was hardly a quiet scene one. In fact, the whole movie was basically just going from one crazy set-piece to another with only a minute or two of quiet time. This film doesn’t give you time to breathe. And since it wants you to care a great deal about these characters that we are stuck with, it would help if at least one of them was fun to be around, or if we knew them beyond a name. The action went on WAY past the point where it should have ended. There was this moment toward the end of the third act where I saw a perfect chance for the film to stop. It was when King Regis died. It was actually pretty emotional. It had everything for a powerful and depressing climax. We all knew that there wasn’t going to be a happy ending here. So why not stop there? Oh, right, we have an even bigger and even more insane battle sequence that never ends to go to.

All things considered, if you are able to completely turn off your brain and enjoy the pretty lights and watching things blow up (I mean more than with a Michael Bay film), or if you are the ultimate die-hard fan of the license, then I guess that this is the film for you. For me, I was just really bored throughout most of it. I was hoping to see some of these characters and get to know them better. But nope. It’s just endless explosions and fighting. What’s more, they are hinting that the whole film is really just a story about an evil nation trying to take over the world. So is that going to be the game? I kind of hope not. I mean, sure, I figure there will be some fantastic elements of world-saving, but I am also hoping that the central focus of the story is Noctis and his comrades fighting to reclaim his throne. That was what I always thought it would be. Am I wrong? Let’s hope so. This isn’t a bad movie. It’s just boring. Very, very boring.